ceelove | Entries tagged with theater

(See what I did there?)
Jan 15 - Feb 20, Lyric Stage Company is presenting Sondheim on Sondheim (which played on Broadway), a showcase of his work interspersed with his commentary.

http://www.lyricstage.com/productions/production.cfm?ID=98

Tickets are pricey but less so on weekdays. My ideal showing would be Feb 11, but I could likely manage others. Anyone want to go with?

Hey, remember before the heat wave...I mean, "spring"...when it was really chilly? Me neither. But I have proof that it exists, in that I was doing about the only thing I could then: create characters and drag them through funny hell.

The end product is Venn Diagram, a six-character version of the idea that I tried last year with Twelve Nights: longtime monogamously-coupled friends suddenly fall in love with each other and messily figure out the new polyamorous terrain. It's kind of like I was taking a photo at too great a distance, and now I've focused in on the details in one section. I've had beta readers whom I trust telling me it's good (and much easier to follow than before). Now I'd like more opinions, before I spend my summer querying theaters about this & Pyglation and Gamalea.

I'm thinking I'd like to do a read-through sooner rather than later of this. I'll need three male-presenting and three female-presenting people (plus one for reading stage directions). Would you be up for reading or attending in a few weeks? Would you like to have a PDF script to read?

Current Mood: accomplished

Earlier this year, I wrote a new play, Twelve Nights. This time I cleverly excluded any of those bothersome songs, hoping that would make it more stageable, but less cleverly sabotaged the play by using twelve characters. I had fun in the writing and learned from the feedback, and next year I'll write a new play with many of the same themes but half the characters.

For now, though, I'd like to have a read-through. Just for funsies. To be done properly, it will require twelve readers, six female-presenting and six male-presenting (plus one for stage directions).

But wait, Cee, what's this play about? Friendship, sex, religion, and mid-life crises. It's a comedy of manners, a modern take on what happens when a love potion a la Midsummer Night's Dream sends a group of friends into a tailspin. It's a love letter to a certain romantically adventurous subset of my community. I'm told that it's witty, interesting, and timely.

So, who will take a role? All I need is twelve other people who can commit to getting together once to read aloud, some time in the next month or two. If there's more interest in that, then yay, we'll have backup readers (which we might need, with a cast of twelve) and maybe even an audience. If there's sufficient interest, I'll reserve a library room or somesuch for the read-through.

Comment or email me at ceelove [at] speakeasy (dot) net, and I'll get you a PDF of the script.

I just got the last arrangement done of Fire and Ice, two and a half years after I first set out to make-there-be-music such that other people could hear how it's supposed to go.

Seventeen songs, people. And in a couple of weeks, the contests open (and one closes again after three weeks): the big-name contests of the music theatre world, with money and prestige and recognition attached, almost always won by men (and teams of men at that). To coin a phrase, if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. The best-known contest requires 45 minutes of music submitted with an entry - and I have 56 minutes.

There's everything-else happening in the last few weeks, with high drama, huge emotions from Sylvana, a resumption of the land search, and all the late-spring grubbing a girl could ask for. But I can't begin to get a handle on it, so I'll leave it at this: I shared The Princess Bride with Sylvana, and it was awesome.

Current Mood: everything at once

I've seen Chess three times now, starting at 17 when I didn't get it at all but loved the music, even though it was the watered-down American version. It's been rewritten [again, still] and is playing in Needham next month.

So who's up for a bit of a traipse to see what I hear is a cool new production of a perhaps-even-more-intact-than-the-original-British Chess? The only date I can make work is May 10 at 8:00 (and I'd still need to get childcare - this is not a kid-friendly show). Tix are $22.

Moar infoz: http://needhamtheatre.org/showinfo.html

And now it's time for the next project, Pyglatian and Gamalea! For this, I need data. See, it's all about tattooing, and my own experience is not very representative: I haaaaate needles, I needed a two-person support crew to get through it and tried to faint, twice. So I'm asking you: tell me about your tattoos. Tell me about deciding to get them, designing them, having them inked, how they've impacted you since. Send your friends to tell me about theirs. Share freely.

Yes yes, I'll be asking to talk to the artists at tattoo studios and hitting up the library and such too. But this is going to be a deeply personal play, and verisimilitude will be my watchword. So I want to hear from individual people, the why and how and ouch and yay and change of it all.

Current Mood: inquisitive

Much as I love me some musicals, I rarely feel that there's something worth saying to y'all about them. But I just watched something (by Netflix video) that was such an interesting intersection of cultural icons, I have to recommend it: the 2011 production of Company. It includes Stephen Colbert singing, dancing, and being beat on by a woman, Christina Hendricks (Malcolm Reynolds' "wife" in Firefly), Patti LuPone, and the finest performance of "Being Alive" I have ever heard, by Neil Patrick Harris. The production had both a depth and coherence I've never before encountered, plus the kind of cleverness of staging that you'd expect from that star-studded cast.

Here's to the ladies who...love Sondheim! And now, back to my playmaking.

ETA: Oh hey, it's up on Youtube in its entirety: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8uJ6wlm828

Current Mood: chipper, because it's warming up!
Current Music: Grin and Bare It (SMASH Cast Version) [feat. Megan Hilty] - SMASH Cast

Woot, I am chair-dancing! My revision of Fire and Ice, she is finish! Almost a year after the first take, but I was kind of busy this year. :P

I've never before enjoyed rewriting - when I did it to get a story published at 20, I said that it was like cutting off my baby's arms and sewing them on backwards (not that I would have known). But this! This was fun. I shaved that puppy down from 129 pages to 99 (should be under two hours), tossed out two songs, and now have something that feels manageable instead of lumbering.

And now I must read everything the internet thinks about what I can do to get it produced. Unless you happen to know a theatrical company looking to do a cutting-edge apocalyptic musical with eight principles and six in the ensemble?

A family slogs across post-apocalyptic America. Most of them die. And, perhaps the worst indignity of all, they are characters in a musical, and so they have to warble about the whole damn thing.

It's Fire and Ice, the epic tragedy that I've been crafting for the past two years. Some cohorts and I will be doing a read/sing-through, open to the public, in the conference room of the main Somerville library.

We will start promptly at 2:00 and likely go til about 5:00, with an intermission between acts. Did I mention there are 19 songs? There are 19 songs. If we're lucky, a majority will be accompanied by piano.

Yes, bring your videocamera. Yes, invite your friends, at least those whose tastes run to countercultural musicals. Yes, volunteer to read a part (in which case, I'll email you the script beforehand) and/or sing (in which case, I'll email you song files and coordinate rehearsing beforehand). But mostly, if you've ever wondered what else the writer of Never After might have to say, just show up, because, YES!, it is finally ready for your delectation.

(But no: don't worry that I will be offended if you don't show up. I get that a musical post-apocalyptic Grapes of Wrath isn't for everyone.)

I've got one or two extra tickets to Seussical for this Saturday at the North Shore Music Theatre at 11:00. Care to join us?

ETA: I've changed my mind, decided that there's a lot of theater coming up in the next couple of months, enough such that I don't feel inclined to go to NH for more.

I'm joining

starphire and

minerva42 for An Evening of Apocalyptic Theatre - except that we're going to a matinee performance, on 3/18. It's in Portsmouth, NH, about an hour from Somerville.

Join us! Tickets will be acquired soon, so tell me quickly if you want in on the end of the world.

So what are you doing next April? On Saturday the 14th, at 11 a.m., I'll be attending the single public performance of Seussical at the North Shore Music Theatre. Same amazing theater-in-the-round, but a quarter to a third of the price of the fabulous Legally Blonde seen there this past few weeks. This is one of a handful of musicals that Sylvana has cottoned to thus far, so I'm looking forward to sharing it with her at least as much as I did The Secret Garden.

Let me know how many tickets to pick up for your kids and you. The best seats in the house are absolute steal at $14 plus fees. It's a longish drive up, and getting out of the parking lot is all but a military maneuver, but it'll be worth it.

Okay, I *think* I've seen the Huntington Theatre do Tom Stoppard before, and if so, it wasn't an amazing performance, or else it was one of his lesser plays, because I can't bring the name to mind. But, still, Stoppard! I can't not go. You can't not either, right?

It's playing everything but Mondays between November 7 and December 7, with matinees on Saturdays. When's good for you?

I'm feeling thrifty and also unwilling to wager that much on this production being amazing, QED, so I'll want cheap seats; but I'd like to decide on something far enough in advance that I can still get GOOD cheap seats. So, let me know soonish; after some arbitrarily defined time-limit, you're on your own.